Most folding knives, such as pocket knives and other utility knives which allow a blade to fold into a handle, have several major drawbacks. One such drawback is that most prior-art folding knives utilize rather powerful springs to hold blades either in fully open (180.degree.) positions or in closed (0.degree.) positions. This often makes such knives difficult to open with one's fingers because one can only grip edges of the blades thereof. On the opposite side of this problem, however, is the problem one encounters with a folding knife that does not use a very strong spring. When the blade of such a knife is fully open, it can easly by inadvertently closed, thereby endangering fingers gripping a handle thereof. It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a folding camp knife in which a blade is not held in the closed position by means of a spring at all, so that the blade can be easily moved out of its handle, but yet which when the blade is in a desired position, either in the handle, or out of the handle, it is positively fixed in that position and cannot be inadvertently moved therefrom to endanger a user's fingers or to cause other problems.
Yet another problem with most prior art folding knives is that they are difficult to clean when they have been used in a dirty environments. That is, filth gets into blade slots of handles thereof and it is difficult to clean the slots out. Thus, it is an object of this invention to provide a folding camp knife which not only can be quickly and easily cleaned when it is assembled, but which can be easily disassembled when necessary so that all parts thereof can be cleaned individually and then reassembled.
Yet another difficulty with most prior art folding knives is that the blades thereof can only be placed in two stable positions, either folded into their handles or fully extended at 180.degree. to their handles. However, there are many applications for knives whose blades can be placed in various fixed positions relative to handles thereof. These prior art folding knives do not take advantage of the fact that their blades pass through various angles relative to their handles when being opened and closed. It is an object of this invention to provide a folding camp knife whose blade can be fixed at various angles relative to its handle case so that the knife can be utilized by pulling the blade fixed at 90.degree. relative to the handle, or for many other applications, some of which are described herein, which are allowed by fixing the blade at various angles to its handle case.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a folding camp knife having the qualities mentioned above which is uncomplicated in structure, relatively inexpensive to manufacture, but yet is highly durable and effective in use.